Gallery update: shooting basketball with the Sony a99 II

The Sony a99 II boasts some serious sports shooting capabilities including 12 fps continuous shooting with AF-C. That coupled with its impressive AF system and 42MP full frame sensor make the a99 II essentially the only high-resolution/high speed full frame camera on the market. So to get a sense of just how powerful this beast is, we took it to a University of Washington vs University of Southern California NCAA Division 1 basketball game.

Okay, now I have downloaded, converted to DNG, and extracted in ACR 9.1 some of the compressed basketball raws, and they lack something in the light/color.

Now, I'm not familiar with that A mount 70-200mm lens. I did play with the new FE mount version last week, and it wasn't amazing for colour and light.

So I can't tell if I'm seeing a lens thing or a compression thing. If there were a few non-compressed basketball shots, and they were significantly better for light/color, then the issue would be a compression thing.

Using PhotoShop CS6, the weird yellow cast is easy to remove from the skin of the players of all ethnic backgrounds, so it's not the lighting so much...

Actually I can open in updated Photoshop and Lightroom. When first open up any camera, doesn't matter if Sony or Canon or anything, it is normal for me to see it as a flat, unsaturated, unsharp. Its a good starting point for you to edit raw file to your own taste. DxO does not allow that as they open up with clipped shadow which is a very bad starting point. DxO is fully automated, Adobe Camera Raw does not.

Now if you change from Adobe Standard to Camera Standard, saturation is improved. Adobe Standard is a very bad profile for low light including sunset images due to clipped highlight, it is not recommended. Cos Adobe Standard has clip and posterisation.

And the non-compressed raws, even those shot at very high ISOs like 25K, don't really have this problem that I'm seeing in the basketball raw. Albeit most of those non-compressed A99II raw samples are shot with very very good SonyZeiss lenses.

I noticed most of Basketball shots are taken with compressed RAW file which is half of 80mb, this could be reason due to buffer limit in camera that has better buffer with compressed raw file than the uncompressed raw file that buffer may struggle with. Also there are pretty much limit with the speed of SD memory card as well.

The only best camera that SD Extreme Pro with 95mb/s works well is Nikon D500. Sony is still behind with speed/write performance. That is very bad news for Sony A7RII it can only do max speed of writing 36.6mb/sec. Its not a very good buffer in camera unfortunately.

Even this does not even improved with UHS-II for Sony A7RII. So with A99 it will be similar problem, still same result 36.6mb/s. So which mean that A99 will work better for compressed raw for the continuous sports shooting.

Right, I understand the reason that compressed raw was used for shooting the basketball game.

But I'd wondered if there were say a few basket shots taken at maximum raw, then I could tell something about the lens, once I'd confirmed that PhotoShop will remove the green/yellow cast from everyone's skin.

That's not what I'm talking about, and I've never noted that issue with Canon files up through my samples with the 5DIV.

I do note though that the SigmaART 85mm Mark II samples shot/posted by DPR seem to have two distinct raw file sizes, but it's not like the Sony A99II or A7RII where the smaller Sony files are pretty much exactly half the size of the non-compressed files.

I'm going to have to fiddle with a Canon 5DIV, when I again have the chance, and figure out this Canon's compression choices. Never really noted this issue when I tried the 5DSR when that came out.

This through comparison studio. I was using low light, raw and ISO 100 and pick some cameras. I find quite noticeable orange cast on her face on the right in Sony A99 II. But in good lighting there is hardly much colour cast.

I have downloaded that raw file and found that in studio sample they were using Adobe Standard for studio sample, so I change that to camera standard and found more orange on it. That is now not right. Looks weird.

I have download a raw basketball shots. Some are highlight blownout in some of colours shirt and the timer clock on the dashboard etc. Its a bad exposure unfortunately. It seems A99II is struggle at best in low light shot like that in basketball stadium that does not give enough room for shadow and highlight. Shadow is also clipped as well as I noticed. When I use Adobe Standard, there is not much orange on it which is much better than I seen sample in here. But since it has both clipped shadow and highlight already in RAW image is not a good thing.

https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/0187176019/photos/3589277/dsc08986 < This I could do best with camera neutral, adjusted highlight/white to reduce blownout highlight and there is room in shadow in neutral setting so I could decrease shadow to near clip to look more contrast. I use default 100/0.6/0 sharpening setting. 0 luminance and 25 colour noise reduction. Lens correction applied. It may look bit boring but reducing orange cast does help a bit. The noise is still so little if using camera neutral is impressive. Increase saturation increase noise btw or if you increase vibrance, more clipping will occur in shadow usually. ISO 6400 is pretty good but cost the DR and clipping in highlight/shadow does not help in raw file.

Are you using PhotoShop CS/CC for the edition of the tiffs you've extracted?

Then part of the problem you're likely seeing with basketball raws is that those images are shot in the compressed raw format. Albeit, I'd not noted any "blown highlights" in the the basketball raws that I downloaded. Also I really don't care if a lighting fixture is washed out. I don't need to read the bulb wattage.

While there is lot of detail and sharpness in these photos, I feel that the background is interfering with the primary subjects, especially when they're wearing similar colors. There has to be more background separation for sports and portraits. I do see that in portraits (earlier images).

Its very common most camera cannot do well with artificial light. Even in film camera you cannot fix it unless you get filter. Most don't bother to get filter and happy with yellow light or blue light. Whatever it is. Not sure whats the fuss you got. Unless your monitor calibration is well off the chart.

naththo I think it is you that has the calibration well off on their monitor because the skin tones are unacceptable on these samples. Unless this can be easily corrected in post processing under these lighting conditions the camera is a non starter for professional work.

My monitor is calibrated perfectly fine with i1 Display Pro and LG 27MU67 using custom settings. Skin tone may look a bit yellow to me but its not as severe as what Dirk sees. HowaboutRAW is correct you should download file yourself and examine them in photoshop, very easy to do it, it doesn't take long and see if you can do better with your own taste of white balance which is you Dirk, you do your job. Photography who published them has their choice of taste of output from the photoshop editing. You cannot change photography's mind. Their choice and their taste. And thats final. To me it looks fine in most of situation as yellow cast is not that severe enough.

A bit! They are miles off where they should be. It is not a case of choice. It is a complete fail. This would be unacceptable for professional work. The work would be rejected by any half competent picture editor.

The white paper on wall, white basket, white border around glass, logo, white basketball shoes, etc there are all perfectly correct under white balance as in just right white. So I think your comment is far fetch.

Yellow is one of the greater mysteries of color, and Selective Color can deal with it.

NB: Avoid the use of the term "skin tone", it has all sorts of racial implications.

Now, if this arena in Seattle uses a great deal of xenon discharge lighting and there is no daylight getting into the space, colour is going to be strange no matter what. In other words, the colour will be wrong, and even a very good Zeiss lens won't be able to work around the mess. In that case, it's easiest to tone down the vibrance.

Excellent set of images which clearly show what modern fast cameras should do, instead of pushing dismal MPs in name of being fast. Now i know what will be the so called reason for not buying; LENSES line-up. I don't know what's the fuss about, but to me Sony has all the lenses what one commonly uses 16-35mm f2.8, 24-70mm f2.8 and 70-200mm f2.8. Got couple of great common telephoto primes in shape of 300mm f2.8 and 500mm f4. Wildlife zoom is covered by excellent 70-400mm. Then there are the 24mm f2, 50mm f1.4 ZA, 85mm f1.4, and 138mm f1.8. As i see most common of the lenses are already available with Sony. There is room to improve with niche lenses as 400mm and 600mm primes; or 35mm f1.4 which requires a redesign. Why would i want to put a cheap f4 zoom lens on a $3000+ camera; is beyond me. And manufacturing works on economies of scale, so people if you want cheaper Sony lenses; start buying more into the A-mount system then just cry about it.

I may have missed it in the trickle of info and articles, but when the A99II focuses, does the on sensor bring up the caboose? In other words, does it still need AF calibration like the other DSLR types? It seems this is a goldmine of a workaround for Sony if they would only implement it.

They would be the only DSLR type system with a dedicated PDAF design (which is still better for tracking) that doesn't have to worry about AF calibration. I would gladly give up 1/3 stop of light for that.

You still have to calibrate as in every other PDAF only AF (Nikon does have auto with its CDAF); it would seem that there may be a way in the future to us the 2 systems offsets to auto calibrate. The 99II gets even more complicated with not just center but all 4 corners available for calibrating. You can imagine what this would be like for a zoom. I haven't tried doing the corners yet.

Hmm i wonder why they haven't explored this yet. If we look at some of the on sensor PDAF cameras out there, they claim to use hybrid AF, meaning it uses PDAF to do the first 90% faster, then the CDAF finishes the lock to keep accuracy in tact.

It would seem the SLT design would be perfect for this. if they would only design it with CDAF to work in conjunction with the dedicated PDAF module. They would have, potentially, a camera that can track like a DSLR but is accurate like a ML.

I would imagine it would be cheaper too than developing sensors with PDAF on board. If they made an A77II like that i don't think i could say no (i owned an A77II and grew tired of the same DSLR issues of focus inconsistency). A big grip with plenty of room for buttons, big battery, big EVF, good AF tracking, no AF accuracy issues, 5 axis IBIS, and all with only a 1/3 or so stop loss.

@Max Iso: Download either a Raw or JPEG file and run it through ExifTool. Look at all the information about AF, it's pretty fascinating.

In the camera, there is a menu called AF Micro Adj. There you can do the W end and T end of the center (both systems), upper left (on chip PDAF), lower left (on chip PDAF), upper right (on chip PDAF), lower right (on chip PDAF).

The need to adjust on chip PDAF strikes us in the office as a complete mystery... 3rd party lenses (or at least our Sigma) do not allow the use of it. It would have been better to do the extremes of the dedicated sensor instead of the on chip sensors.

In use, it seems like maybe 3rd party lenses need a bit of adjustment, but I haven't used any native glass (particularly SSM) that needed tweaking.

Thx sam. Hmm that's odd that they would allow on sensor calibration but not dedicated sensor. I like that they have so many variables to adjust but after using Micro Adjust on so many bodies, including SLT, im just low on confidence now.

The issue have had is once i calibrate and then change lighting or environmental conditions, it's often not accurate anymore. I wish we could get Sony SLT to work with Panasonic's CDAF. No need for calibration and all the goodies SLT offers.

You miss the point. Since SLT already has a dedicated PDAF module, also using CDAF (that's fast, which is why i cited Panasonic) would allow good tracking while also removing the need for calibration. Contrary to popular opinion, on sensor PDAF isn't without AF accuracy issues just bc it's on sensor, at least according to Sony engineers.

CDAF is another story as it does no distance measurements, it's all about contrast. Using a fast CDAF design for the last "phase" of hybrid AF makes sense, im just wondering why Sony left it out of the A99 line.

Panasonic got lens in line up that match with M4/3 so it needs to stay 4/3rd sensor for people to be able to use Panasonic lens. If they were to change to APS-C or FF, it would causes an absolutely chaos and have to wait for new lens to work well with APS-C or FF. Thats the problem!

Ok i think this is going a bit off the rails. I wasn't serious about Panasonic's actual input, i was just saying if Sony could harness CDAF that was as fast as Panasonic's it would compliment their dedicated PDAF. The two combined would mean fast AF-S or AF-C but without the need for calibration.

@Spencer: Both dedicated PDAF (DPDAF) and on sensor PD (OSPDAF) rely on autocorrelation information which is affected by alignment problems or lens motor accuracy (aberrations and noise for OSPDAF, too). The software assumes perfect alignment between lens and sensor etc. Since OSPDAF and dedicated PDAF need to work together for hybrid AF, adjusting both is necessary in my opinion, as no final CDAF step is used.@MAxIso: CDAF requires different focus motors for speed and accuracy. The screw drive lenses will not work nicely, for example. Adding this over PDAF means an additional time lag until the image is taken. This is possible for stills, but with sports shooting esp. at high fps I think it is not beneficial.

Does the a99 II allows to make af adjustment for wide and tele zoom setting in third party zoom lenses for the dedicated PDAF unit? We already know that the OSPDAF points micro adjusting only works for Sony lenses.

Max Iso - Use of CDAF comes at an expense of tracking speed. One needs lenses with motors designed to fast response of going back and forth as is required to nail contrast focus. That is where the E-mount comes in. However, subject tracking speed is still slower than a dedicated PDAF. Maybe in a few years, it will be there. Till that time, enjoy the A99ii and reap its benefits to the fullest.

Yahoo, yes the result are great, but maybe you should also get some cup of tea and chill.

The e-m1 II has some "121 cross-type AF on-chip phase detection points", and that allows it some serious speed and accuracy in AF. I don't know how it compares against such a beast as the A99II, but I've also seen a lot of sport images (indoor and outdoor) with the OM-D with also impressive results.The main difference could be the 1/4 sensor area in the olympus, which puts it at 2stops total light disadvantage, but in term of performance, they seem ... comparable.

@yahoo2u... Get over what? Was your comment an extrapolation or did you try both?

Everything else being equal (tracking algorithms, AF density and sensitivity, angle of view - not focal length - , aperture, etc...) a smaller sensor should perform better at C-AF + T due to less data to process and deeper DOF. But I have not tried either so I do not know.

It used to be that the semi-transparent prism would cause a 2-top hit to the high ISO performance, but it seems Sony's worked hard on improving that, and the results are impressive. This series of cameras also have the most interesting articulated LCD in the industry too, and I wish they had put it on their E-Mount FF cameras.

You could easily show it in a sample gallery and without it the samples are meaningless. Need to see how many frames it is locking focus on and how many frames it fails to do it on. Otherwise 12fps is just a spec number without meaning.

It's good, that in this way, keeping the clients they offer support to at minimum, they can offer support quickly. But in imposing rules for whom they allow to access this support it makes it irrelevant for the non pro, who in return must rely on the "standard support". And they seem to not put any effort there, as probably they consider that it doesn't matter, since they've got "the working pros" covered. Also the gear imposed looks strange...

I downloaded some of the basket pictures and resamled them to about 16 Mp to match the other full frame action/sports/wildlife cameras. Wow! The images looks great, with excellent sharpness and detail, and great contrast! Just pity that Sony doesn't yet offer a pair of bright 400 mm lenses, or at least a 400 mm f:4 and a 600 mm f:5.6 or brighter.

Nikon sports shooter here who is keeping my eye on the brand's progress overall. Love what I see. Would really like to take one out for a test drive but until their lens range includes some 2.8 teles, (300MM +) I'll keep doing what I'm doing.... and waiting.

Yes it is no low cost alternative. I use A7rii with all f1.4 lenses. Not cheap, too. But I still find the difference too much. 1700 Euros to Canon and 2300 Euros to the Nikon version is quite something. And I would rate Canikon's offering higher.

If you don't mind the racket, the Minolta HS (High Speed) series is phenomenal, and sells for very competitive prices. Unlike Canon, who deprecated all of FD, and now parts of EF, and Nikon, who only refined screw-driven AF late in the race, Minolta stuck to their guns and made their older lenses as future-proof as possible, with the result that an A99II can use lenses from the 80's-90's and track quickly and efficiently, *and* stabilize them.

Kharan , good point. And the 80-200mm F/2.8 HS are selling for $500 these days. The problem is they do not have motors, but with the A99ii and A77ii along with the LAEA4 (very old focus system though) they will be useful for a long while.

I assume the sports shots were done in AF-C and burst mode? For an objective evaluation of this / any camera's AF-C capabilities it would be nice to see all pictures coming from a burst, not only the keepers. Similar to DPR's bike test shot sequence where you can see focus quality for each single shot.

It seems even from the keepers, a good group of them are focused on the wrong player or not the face. Many are focused on the defender that's closer than the player with the ball or even the ball. The question is, is this tracking error or human error? Since the Sony a7's and a6000's all suffer from tracking switching subjects to which moves or is closer and the same shape.

I am not casting stones here. Just saying what I see. I have heard of yellow casts being associated with Sony products in the past, but that was only through forums which you do not know if it can be trusted.

As a video & stills shooter, this camera looks great. But my Canon 5DMKIII and accessories has been paid for long ago. Hard to leave a system.

this is one of the best camera in the world now. EVF is great, speed is great, not too much noises at high iso (but not too few)... Lenses are not many and stupid expensive but has highest quality. Sony say its a good camera for sport, but why is not art photography? for still photography? Of course, yes. Price is little high. But again, great camera...

According to Dyxum database, there are over 400 A-mount lenses.http://www.dyxum.com/lenses/index.aspSome of the Minolta lens are high quality and good price.Beside the Minolta lenses, you can also use Tamron / Sigma A-mount lens eg. Tamron 70-200 F2.8, Sigma 24-105 F4, etc.Zeiss Otus lenses can also convert to A-mount easily and they are all stabilized in A-mount body.

And how many of that 400 can fit well to this 42MP sensor? With good AF? Not many, i think... But, again, if pay a lot of money, there is great lenses, Zeiss... Sony... Enough for most kind of works but very expensive. For E-mount now is more lenses then for A-mount. I talk about modern lenses...

You know, personally me seriously thinking about buy this camera and one standard Zeiss zoom, maybe also modern great ultra-wide zoom. This camera has one small but great feature: inside the EVF is possible to see black and white image during the shooting, same as from modern mirrorless cameras. For me its will be very nice help, because of, for example, one funny true Black and White camera (Leica!!!!!) cost 3 times more just for body, then this A99ii and he has worse image quality in the world. I also had few days Sony A7Rii but its very different for me, not comfort at all... Now I use 5D mark iii with 5 pro lenses, and of course, colors from Sony are maybe worse in the world, absolutely unreal and stupid, but I tested them for convert to black and white and its ok, not bad, just you must never use Lightroom, but Phase one... Its just my opinions...

Sony colors are tested to be the most accurate but if you are used to the kodacolor of the 5dIII, then it will take some getting used to. People are complaining that Canon have adopted these more natural looking colors with their newer, high DR cameras.

Sony's color are great if you have choose the correct Profile in the Camera Calibration in Lightroom.People said the color from Lightroom is not good, because they have choose the Adobe Standard Profile.Even DXO Optics Pro can produce better color than Lightroom Adobe Standard Profile. In the DXO, you can also choose different camera rendering in the Color setting.

i took my Canon 6D to an event i was photographing, having my A99 as a backup. It took about 10 mins before i grabbed my SONY to use for the rest of the event. Its such an advantage to use the back LCD to take pictures and flip out the screen and get creative. Cameras don't need mirrors in them anymore. Much more fun shooting with the SONY. Just a preference. :-)

Thank you Samuel Spencer! My press pass gets me in a lot of places, but I haven't asked at the stadium the UConn huskies play. Fyi sometimes I avoid the picture galleries because every time I see them I miss Seattle. Keep up the good work!

Nice pictures! Terrific peak of action shots. Thanks so much for being willing to share. I too post many sports photos on smugmug but I'm not comfortable sharing in an open forum without parental permission when it comes to high school players.I may have to consider this camera when it is time to upgrade.

Well, I wish they paid teachers well in Texas! I'm a single guy without kids. So my kids are my students. And I love taking pictures of them. Plus I can't stand wasting my life shooting with less than the best equipment I can afford. The A99ii is the first A mount camera that challenges the goodness of the Canon 1DXl and 7D2 that I also shoot with. Thanks for the comments on my theatre shots; I'm so proud of those kids - most of whom are my students. https://garynelson.smugmug.com/Klein-Oak/CurtainsAs for sharing without parental permission, I don't seek parental permission for public performances - like basketball games or stage plays. If the Houston Chronicle can shoot it, so can I. I'd have to have parental permission for shots taken in a classroom or elsewhere during the school day. My school maintains a list for those purposes - parents can opt in or out at the beginning of the school year.

I under stander. I don't seek permission for local papers. Parents want me to do that. I also understand being proud of your high school students. This Sony may be the first dale to lure me away from Nikon!

I'm not hurt, but suspicious of your repeated attacks on Sony and their products. If you don't like them, fine, but to insistently bash and complain on the comments section of every Sony-related article reeks of trolling.I also realize that the numbers for SLTs are terrible, I mean, they're below Pentax! But that doesn't detract anything from the A99II, and I feel like this camera will keep the mount alive four more years easily.

It appears your feelings really are hurt by the facts. Don't shoot the messenger. If you read I never said anything negative about the camera, but did call it "Great".

At least you agree the truth is Sony held 14% of the market with DSLRs but then they switched to DSLTs and market share fell to less than 2%. Even Pentax is crushing them.It's too bad because I prefer an EVF and like the DSLTs.

QFT:"LOL, the a6500 LCD basically goes blank when shooting 4K video and the IBIS is one of the worst implementations on the market. One unbiased review called it "embarrassing".But I am sure it works great with all those sub $2000 F/2.8 zooms Sony has to offer. :D"Let's leave it at that. Sony lost their market share because of their focus on E-mount (they basically transfered sales from one mount to the other) and because of Nikon's cadre of enthusiast products - if you look at sales data, Nikon grew in market share during the days of Sony's fall, while Pentax remained flat.

It depends which category they put the SLT into.For example, DC-Watch (one of the biggest camera web site for photograph in Japan). They classify Sony SLT camera as mirrorless camera.They start doing that since 2010. At that time, Sony has made both OVF DSLR & EVF SLT. Therefore they put EVF SLT camera in mirrorless category because the mirror does not flip. A99mk2 has get the third place in 2016 Award in mirrorless category, just slightly behind EM1-mk2 & XT-2.http://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/special/2016award/1037175.html

RE: ... the only high-resolution/high speed full frame camera on the market.

This alone says it all :)

That said, I really think Sony has done it with the a99 II in terms of SLT implementation. The SLT system has been subject to much controversy in the past on matters of light loss, and IQ metrics. The a99 mark II changes all of this by putting Sony on par with the best of the best in every aspect of IQ and camera performance.

And what's interesting with this is where few people realize that Sony never had to overcome the characteristics of the SLT system to delivery a winning system. But more to the point, all they had to do was deliver a system that could either match or exceed the competition. Which is precisely what the a99 II has done. Match and exceed every other FF camera in production.

"few people realize"That is Sony's problem. I've own most Sony SLTs and prefer the EVF to an OVF, but Sony has virtually killed of the A mount system. Even this camera has crippled video for no reason. Someone in the A mount forum asked Sony if there was a valid reason for fixing the aperture at F/3.5, and Sony replied "no". A real shame too. This could have been a great video camera too.

Who cares what others shoot? The D500 is APS-C so it's IQ will be inferior and there is no such thing as a 7Diii. Anyways serious sports shooters don't shoot APS-C. They shoot with cameras like the $6500 D5 or Canon 1DXII.

No other high resolution camera can shoot sports the way this camera can. It's a camera that can shoot a basketball game one day and do high resolution fine art and landscape photography the next. What other camera excels at that?

Sony doesn't seem to be marketing the A99ii as a pro sports camera to compete against the likes of the $6500 D5. It's more of an all rounder that can shoot the kids basketball or Soccer game one day, a wedding the next, wildlife the next and high res landscapes the next. In other words a camera that can do everything very well rather than being the best at any one thing. The slow buffer clearing was obviously an attempt to keep the price at a reasonable level.

The A99mk2 is 42MP BSI Full-Frame sensor which can shoot 12fps burst at full resolution uncompressed raw with AF & mechanical shutter. It is comparable to a double price D5.IF you want to compare a Sony camera with your X-T2, choose the A6500. The A6500 already good enough to beat your X-T2 with better focus, 4k video and 5 axis IBIS.

LOL, the a6500 LCD basically goes blank when shooting 4K video and the IBIS is one of the worst implementations on the market. One unbiased review called it "embarrassing".But I am sure it works great with all those sub $2000 F/2.8 zooms Sony has to offer. :D

Mario GTI, I have plenty of basketball and football examples on my Flickr page. Stating the X-T2 sucks at sports is a pure fallacy. I'm just an amateur, but there are plenty of other examples of the X-T2 performing well shooting sports.

@Fun 4 allThe LCD goes blank does it? What you mean is the brightness dims to conserve power. I understand that as a design compromise but then I'm not a child. I appreciate that Sony offers the best 4K on the market in an aps-c camera.

The IBIS is 'embarrassing' is it? How is the IBIS in the D500 and the M5 then? the A6500 is the ONLY aps-c mirrorless camera with IBIS. It is one of only a handful of aps-c cameras either mirrorless or DSLR that have IBIS (the others are made by Pentax) Once again your comment is worthless.

Please also display JPG straight out of camera image to compare to RAW cos photoshop RAW is pretty much awful for Sony A99 II not very nice moire, noise etc. Mostly affecting dogs action photos where I can see noise and moire on dog fur. Pretty awful!

Some people say - for get absolutely goo jpegs from this camera you must make many own settings but its possible, possible to get great jpegs from this camera... I just read it in internet somewhere...

I don't believe mart1234 comment. Really rubbish comment of the day. I have seen some of that sample, very well done photos! Pretty fast AF in comparison to A7R II with slower AF. My sister use to have A37 and her phase detection autofocus was faster than my Nex 7 and A7 by that far. You will never beat AXX series body true phase detection AF.

Most people don't look at photos at the pixel level, they look at the picture level. And from the perspective of professional sports photography, the pictures usually end up in news media (papers or web sites), where critical IQ isn't the first priority. It's about getting that special shot out to the public before anyone else does.

While I agree with the sentiment, I think pixel level clarity matters, because one of the big selling points of a high-res sports camera is the potential for cropping. Having said that, the quality seems good from where I'm sitting.

I looked at pixel level already and it looks sharp in some area cos F stop was F2.8, shallow focus to me. If you want to rack up higher F stop, mean you will need much higher ISO 3200/6400 and it will have much more noisy image.

The photos would work for a newspaper or online but if you look closely a lot of the photos are not fully in focus or are focusing on the closer defender instead of the man with the ball. Leaving most of the photos useless for enlargements or posters or a team home page full screen shot. Viewing them on a desktop you'll notice this very quickly, it doesn't mean it was 100% the cameras fault though some can be human error as well. Just have to wait and see if any sports photographers will start using Sony. Sony seems to be pushing to break into this market for the past year or two. Gaining more lenses that can fully take advantage of the focusing speed and high res sensor might help.

pckcpga there are nothing wrong with basketball photos, F2.8 is shallow depth of field, so some may look out of focus in most area, only one small area in focus. That A99II does very good job with very fast AF thanks to a true physical hardware phase detection AF in the camera instead of faked/not real as in digital of phase detection AF in A7 like I got. A7 AF is nowhere that as fast as A99II. Or A7RII is no where as fast as A99II either as A7RII don't have a true phase detection AF.

My problem isn't the wide open but the fact that the focus is on the wrong target, in basketball it should have been on the man with the ball not the closest face like the defender. So either the tracking switched subjects or the photographer didn't chose a subject, something very important in sports photography. The camera needs to track the same subject and not switch to the closest face or moving object, which Sony has had a lot of difficulties with in the past. So I'm curious to know which it was, the photographer or the camera error. Looking at sports photos large is important since that's where sports posters and magazine full page photos come from and most photos have some cropping as well. I agree Adobe is not great would have rather seen capture one pro.

I agree with pkcpga. In many basketball shots the focus is somewhere on the body or ball or other subjects, not the primary subject, esp. the face. On other, more static subjects, focus is fine, but that isn't too difficult.As one of the selling points is the high resolution making cropping easier, this is sometimes detrimental to this selling point. If only sharpness at web resolution matters, I wouldn't need a 42MP sports camera.

The most professional sports shooting would be Nikon D5 or Canon 1DX Mark II that can do better with high ISO shooting with lower noise than Sony A99 II at lower MP. Lower MP in pro sports shooting camera have better result with high ISO and thats the reason why. Adding too much MP cost more high iso noise.

Not sure how anyone in photography can respond to more megapixels equals better high ISO. That is false, why did sony come out with an a7s if more megapixels means better high ISO, why did Nikon and canon not have 40 or 50 megapixel low light, sports cameras. It's not only for buffering speeds or processing power, each pixel becomes smaller allowing it to collect less light. The reason sensors become larger, otherwise a 24 megapixel pocket camera with a fingernail sized chips would perform better at high ISO than a FF sensor with 20 mp which everyone already knows is not true. It's the same reason low light Nikon pros will grab a d750 instead of d810.

@pkcpga: downsized to the same resolution, you can get almost the same performance. Initially micro lenses weren't that great such that fill factors were lower. But if you manage to obtain the same number of photons statistically, it is the downstream electronics, read noise etc. which limited high MP sensors. Modern micro lenses provide almost no light loss. Add BSI and you can get the best of both worlds: great low ISO DR + excellent high ISO when downsized. When viewed at 100% of course the high MP camera will show lower S/N ratio.

I can safely say A99II and A7RII can get away with high ISO shooting in low light, in acceptable level till it gets to ISO 12800 before haze, blue blotches start to appear more at ISO 25600 which gets bit too messy. Compare to my old A7 it can do well up to ISO 6400 then at ISO 12800 is a bit mess.

2016 was pretty good for high-end ILCs, as we'd expect from a Photokina year. Click through to read more about this year's crop of enthusiast and professional ILCs, and for your chance to vote on which was best. Vote now

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